That Was the Week that Was: Sunday Evening Open Thread

Welcome to the Sunday evening open thread.

I spent most of this week in Chicago on a business trip. Only my second time there, and my first time in the downtown core – and what a beautiful downtown it is. The river, the lake, the Magnificent Mile, Millennium Park… and perfect weather to boot.

The week that was:

RIP to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon in July 1969. I was pretty wee then, but I still remember watching the first moon walk.

More tragic gun violence made even more tragic by the shooting of innocent bystanders - probably by police - in New York.

The US Government may have lied about the real number of civilian deaths in Pakistan from drone attacks. I'm shocked, I tells ya, shocked.

The UN/Iran nuclear talks have broken up. At the same time, Iran has shrouded a suspected nuclear site so that it can no longer be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Where have we heard stuff like this before? Plus, this. Sigh.

Thirty years later and they're still playing "whodunit" over Natalie Wood's death.

Mark Sanford (remember him?) is getting married. Awwwww. I just love a happy ending.

Three cheers for Nikola Tesla, and kudos to The Oatmeal for Operation Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, which is reportedly nearing its fundraising goal. Awesome.

And how was YOUR week?

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I would not call

Mehitabel's picture

assembling IKEA furniture "fun", per se. However, now that I've gotten the job done, I'm ridiculously proud of myself. I am NOT mechanically inclined so it took me most of the day to accomplish this (to me) Herculean task.

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Surprisingly, for me anyway, my aunt purchased

Glinda's picture

an entertainment center, not particularly big, from Ikea and paid to have it delivered and assembled on site. She told me the "guy" was there for seven hours. (Surprised about the time, not the fact that my aunt bought an entertainment center)

So... if the "guy" who supposedly was the expert at this took seven hours, then hell yes, you should be proud of yourself. (Granted, not the same size furniture, but still... seven hours?)

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Iran and the NeoCons

LaEscapee's picture

Read this article today that shows that there are still those that think war is the answer and those that get punished for foiling their plans.

Sunk

Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn’t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. She had worked in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, where neoconservative hawks first began planning to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

But she was not prepared a few years later in Bahrain when she encountered plans by high-ranking admirals to confront Iran, any one of which, she reckoned, could set the region on fire. It was 2007, and Todd, then 42, was a top political adviser to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

Previous 5th Fleet commanders had resisted various ploys by Bush administration hawks to threaten the Tehran regime. But in spring 2007, a new commander arrived with an ambitious program to show the Iranians who was boss in the Persian Gulf

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Another view from Juan Cole

LaEscapee's picture

Plot to Provoke war with Iran thwarted by Navy analyst

Shorter WaPo: In spring of 2007, someone in the Bush administration (unindicted co-conspirator Richard Bruce Cheney? Neocons?) Sends uber hawk Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff to Oil Gulf with instructions to provoke a war with Iran. He allegedly toys with challenging Iran’s claim to half of the Shatt al-Arab. He certainly decided abruptly to bring two aircraft carriers to the Gulf, in hopes of provoking Iran into doing something stupid, and without telling the State Department or the White House.

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I feel sad about Armstrong

geomoo's picture

Not personal really but what he represented. I always felt a generational/historical connection to him. My mother may have been mild-psychotic and prone to forgetting my existence, but she had foresight. When I was younger than 8, well before Kennedy and the space program, we stood outside looking at the moon and she said, "You could be the first person to walk on the moon." She was off by only a few years--I was perhaps ten years too young.

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good evening! so this is what we're looking...

poligirl's picture

forward to this week. / snark:

isaac la

the brown dot is lake borgne, the red dot is lake ponchartrain, the green dot is lake maurepas, and we're at the eastern edge of the blue dot... for scale, we're 50 miles from NOLA and 40 miles from Baton Rouge.

we're now under hurricane warning.... hopefully we won't lose power...

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